Facebook's newest data center is going to make some big tech companies very nervous

Facebook announced today that it plans to open a new data center
in Clonee, Ireland — named EU2 — since it's the
second data center in the European Union, after the first
in Luela, Sweden.

This new data center is
Facebook's sixth overall, reflecting the social network's
ever-growing need to build more infrastructure to handle all
those photos, videos, and 'likes.'

But there's something different about this one, and it's
going to make a lot of big tech companies sit up and take
notice.

First off, this data center will run on 100% clean,
renewable wind power. Second, and more importantly, EU2 is the
fourth data center from Facebook to be 100% powered by
Open Compute Project hardware, reflecting its increasing
investment in the market-shaking technology.

The Open Compute Project, or OCP, is an initiative started
by Facebook in 2011 to completely change how servers and
networking hardware is built to better suit the Internet age. It
makes Facebook the unlikely vanguard of a movement to rethink
large-scale computing and shake up a $141 billion market.

Now, Facebook is already a customer of companies like Cisco
and Arista Networks in its existing data centers, though it's
been trying to use OCP-based tech to reduce its reliance. In
mid-2015, Facebook said that OCP tech had already saved it $2
billion in operating costs.

With EU2, though, Facebook has its fourth data
facility that's completely and totally built from scratch using
OCP tech. If it works, and there's no reason to think it won't,
more will probably follow. And then other companies will likely
follow in Facebook's footsteps.